Ron Beck speaks to the power of a model based estimating system providing insight to its attributes like reusable templates and saleable features. How does ACCE differ from my proprietary Excel-based spreadsheets?

The energy industry has been hit hard by current global economic interruptions: rapid drops in demand, a changing mix of preferred products, plummeting crude prices, difficulty staffing essential production sites and fragile supply lines. Energy companies are re-examining their digital capabilities and increasing their focus on digitalization as an essential strategy.

In this white paper, plant managers, engineers and supervisors can learn the different ways simulations models can be used throughout the lifecycle of their plant. It focuses on seven areas you can use process simulation software (like Aspen Plus or Aspen HYSYS) for troubleshooting, process monitoring, and real time performance monitoring or real time optimization (RTO).

In the current extreme VUCA (volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous) environment, chemical producers are learning the importance of operating with insight and agility. At the same time, companies are being tested for the depth of their resilience, and learning how to navigate huge shifts in demand, supply, workforce and economics, and emerge from this crisis in a stronger position.

There is a challenge for many refinery and chemical companies to impove the analysis proess and raise performance. The inside story of operational intelligence lies in rich thin visualization and analytics capabilities that improve production execution, enabling process manufacturers to quickly identify and resolve operational issues.

Virtually all multinational, diversified chemical companies are expanding their emphasis on specialty chemicals. Competition is intensifying, resulting in both margin degradation and faster product commoditization while customers are further exacerbating the situation by demanding “faster, better and cheaper” products. Learn how to leverage production scheduling to improve customer satisfaction and further take advantage of flexibility inside the plant.

Whether particles are being formed, reduced in size, enlarged, participating in reactions, or just being separated from a fluid stream, ignoring or poorly modeling the solids processing steps may lead to lost opportunities, including cost reductions and quality improvements. The main challenges that arise when optimizing or troubleshooting a solids process include inefficient designs due to separate modeling of fluids and solids sections, overdesign of equipment, high-energy demands, reduced yields and quality variability. Modeling the solids section of a process is important for many common processes including specialty chemicals, agrochemicals, metals and mining, pharmaceuticals, biofuels and more. This paper describes the approach for incorporating granular solids and the corresponding solids processing steps when modeling processes.

Whether it’s a pilot plant or a complex petrochemical plant, these facilities rarely run like a well-oiled machine. There are always unknown variable dependencies that are difficult to understand, and there’s substantial room for improvement. In many situations, optimization is not the focus for plants because there are issues with reliability and safety that take precedence. Does this sound familiar? The ability to simplify job tasks and boost efficiency will greatly enhance plant performance but also, make your job easier

Small operational issues in the sulphur recovery unit (SRU) can lead to higher emisisons — or worse, a frustrating and costly shutdown. Simulation of the SRU can enable more reliable operations and fewer shutdowns through the prevention of issues and quick and effective troubleshooting. In this paper, we present three common operational issues and show how simulation was used to prevent or quickly resolve the situation.

See how the results of BLOWDOWN Technology in Aspen HYSYS compare with published results.